It's Amateur Night on the international intrigue stage, as perennial bestseller Archer (As the Crow Flies, etc.) shows Saddam Hussein's henchmen grooming an actor to take the place of the President so that they can—push the button that starts WW III? Plant a bomb that will destroy both chambers of Congress? No, steal the Declaration of Independence! Actually, the actor, one Lloyd Adams, is much less important than his support staff: Tony Cavalli, the unscrupulous, well-connected lawyer whose off-the-books ``Skills'' department takes on the assignment of switching the Declaration for a copy that will remain in the Archives until Saddam publicly burns the original on July 4, bringing Bill Clinton to his knees; T. Hamilton McKenzie, the Nobelist in plastic surgery (!) whose daughter is kidnapped to encourage him to rearrange Adams's face; William O'Reilly (``Dollar Bill''), nonpareil forger who copies the Declaration exactly and throws in a few near- copies for good measure; Johnny Sciasatore, distinguished director whose fake movie motorcade of the President helps get the imposter into the Archives; and a contract killer in Laura Ashley dresses who goes around mopping up the rest of the staff. The Skills crew gets the goods, of course, and then the ``Mission: Impossible'' scenario is reversed, as Scott Bradley, a Yale Law prof and CIA hanger-on, joins rookie Mossad agent Hannah Kopec (who already thinks she's killed Scott when his earlier cover as Mossad contact ``Simon Rosenthal'' was blown: don't ask) and a giant, custom-made safe named Madame Bertha to sneak the Declaration back out of Baghdad. With all those copies and all those agents plotting at cross-purposes, you just know there are going to be multiple switches and surprises, but instead of generating suspense, they just add to the general air of genial preposterousness. Undeniably entertaining, if you can get into the spirit of farcical and inconsequential melodrama. Maps of the Washington motorcade route and the Mideast—just in case you have any questions. (First printing of 500,000)
Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-017945-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1993
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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